Call for Medicare to disclose patient data

A group of leading specialist doctors has launched a push for Medicare to collect more information on who is taking prescription drugs, for what reason and how long.

The data, stripped of identifying personal details, would then be used to develop health policy.

At present, the Health Insurance Commission only collects state and national data on how many scripts are filled through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and at what cost. The only information on the demographics of prescription drug users comes from separate surveys.

"With the chronic diseases, which we recognise are major problems in this country, we really do not have as much information as we would like," said the chairman of the National Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disorders Advisory Group, John Eisman.

"Part of that relates to reasonable concerns about privacy, but there might be some way of linking information while protecting privacy."");document.write("

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Professor Eisman, who is also director of the bone and mineral research program at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, said: "There's a lot we don't know about the state of health, risk factors for disease and medication use where a more tightly linked system would provide information that would be very valuable in terms of directing better health care."

Ian Hickie, the CEO of the National Depression Initiative, beyondblue, said the lack of record linkage meant it was impossible to gauge the effectiveness of the $300million spent annually on antidepressants through the $4billion taxpayer-funded PBS.

At a February meeting of representatives of the national health priority areas - asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, mental health and injury prevention - most doctors supported expanded Medicare data collection in principle, Professor Hickie said. But a spokeswoman for the Commonwealth's chief medical officer, Richard Smallwood, who chairs the group, said that the proposal was not under active consideration.

"The additional information would always be valuable but how you would maintain doctor-patient privacy needs to be factored into any new ways of getting that information," she said.